Flying the flag for well-dressed blogging

It appears someone wishes to awaken this blog from the depths of slumber into which it had crept.

"I can vouch from first-hand experience that these fine fellows dressed in the fashion that JP promotes, but as you can see they have all but given up blogging, unfortuantely. Which just leaves Wardytron to fly the flag for well-dressed blogging, I think. And Norman Geras, of course."

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/12/19/recognise_anyone.php

Perhaps I shall return in the New Year in the fashion of a dandified Barbarossa. Now, however, my liver demands special attention and I have neither the time nor the opportunity to sort things out.

Coincidence?

I'm usually a sceptical about surveys (four out of every ten are made up) but here are two unrelated ones which appear to back each other up.

The Irish are a very happy bunch - and they take a lot of drugs.


And if you believe only five per cent of Irish adults take cannabis, well good luck to you.

Persian punch

Hitchens in Iran

I found a bootlegger on my arrival at Tehran's airport and was offered alcohol on principle in every home I entered—Khomeini's excepted—even by people who did not drink.

News travels fast, doesn't it?

Well, well, wellio welio-oh, well, well, well, well, well

Plenty of reminders in recent weeks about the sleaze of the Haughey era. By coincidence I was reading one such report while listening to Fela Kuti’s ITT.

If I were a fancy pants podcaster, I’d play it for you now. As it is you’ll have to go and buy a copy, or go and download it if you haven’t got one; trust me, it’s great.

I was struck by the lyrics:

They pick a man… of low mentality to become of high position… then go to friend, friend to journalist; he friend, friend to commisssioner; friend, friend to permanent secretary; friend, friend to minister; friend friend to head of state, then start, start to steal money… like Charlie Haughey and Ray Burke.

Okay, he didn’t sing the last bit. Ireland’s not as corrupt as Nigeria (that’s not meant to be as damning as it sounds), but here’s Kevin Myers (subs required) on the link between garda corruption and the high-handed attitude to power typified by CJH and chums,
A taster:

But there was more to Sean Doherty than that. On his watch, the rule of law almost ceased to exist in Roscommon, as he obliged his petitioning constituents in relation to drunk-driving and speeding charges. What garda was ever going to risk his career with such a man, who had absolutely no sense of right or wrong? For his real duties were defined not by any morality, but by loyalty to the extended clan that was his constituency, and his tribal chief who was Charles Haughey.


Indeed, he was not a political representative of a modern, secular society in which government serves the state; the reverse was the truth. He truly was a pre-Enlightenment man, who saw the state merely as a useful instrument to be manipulated in the service of his party and its leader....

Moreover, one factor above all else made it obligatory not to hide the truth behind the usual parade of obsequies: the Garda scandal in Donegal...

Now this scandal did not occur somewhere in the wilder reaches of the Belmullet peninsula or Connemara, but in the front line of the Border war against terrorism, the very area where our most élite and dedicated gardaí should have been deployed. Instead, we got corner-boys and liars who, far from being sacked after the shocking Morris revelations, have not even been suspended; instead, lucky, lucky Dublin is to have the benefit of their services.

In other words, there is something rotten at the heart of justice in Ireland, and this rottenness was not the creation of Sean Doherty but the concoction of generations of political manipulation of An Garda Síochána.

PS: For those of you who are a bit slow on the uptake and who wondered at my characteristic sneering response to Geldof’s pious mitherings on the G8 debt relief deal, there’s a clue in ITT. The title for starters, plus the mantra (oppression, inflation, corruption… aids) might point you in the right direction.

Splendid fellows

I like the sound of the Aka tribesmen profiled in the Graun recently. Quite rightly they let the women do their share of going out hunting while the chaps sit around doing the central African version of sitting around watching daytime TV. I should imagine it would be even easier than a househusband’s job in Europe. For instance, I doubt that hunter gatherers have to worry about the kids sticking their fingers in electric sockets so they can probably leave them to it.

Sadly it doesn’t say whether their womenfolk are the sort who would insist on doing the cleaning again – thereby making it easier to get away with a half-arsed effort – to meet some, superior, feminine standard.

Anyhow, they seem ideal role models until the glorious day when we can persuade women to do all the tough and unpleasant tasks themselves.

"It is a glorious prospect, for an idle fellow." Jerome K Jerome.

Facilitating exchange and mutual critique between the world's people (actual three-dimensional people)

One would hope that the senior figure in church founded on murky compromise, cups of tea and, erm, Henry VIII's sex life would be a patient, forgiving soul. If so, Dr Rowan Williams must have read The Times report of his speech on the media with a more-in-sorrow-than anger sigh.

In a superb vindication of the Murdoch world, his plea for a more “more realistic, less fevered" approach was misrepresented somewhat in the hunt for a good headline.

And so it came to pass that Harry's Place waxeth wrath, verily until the Gruaniad's online edition of the speech came unto them. At which there was great tut-tutting and wringing of hands as the liberal media basketh in their own virtue as do the dolphins in a new age voyage of self discovery.


The Times's timing was even better in that it came in the week when Dominic Lawson finally got the boot from the Sunday Torygraph - the same rag which announced that the tsunami had caused the archbish to question his faith. Of course, he had done no such thing.

In many ways the archbishop seems like a good egg, but he really has only himself to blame when he makes pronouncements - his argument is basically the media needs to be careful not to get too full of its self-importance and try to be as accurate and fair as possible - which make certain blogs seem like models of clarity and brevity. "Unpoliced conversation" was an unfortunate phrase; "they are designed to speak to God and to each other and to give names to the things of the world around them. They are who they are in and through how they communicate" is classical academic jargon.

The header here is taken from his speech. It's what I should be doing on this blog were I a good Anglican. Which I'm not.

Roll out the pork barrel

The Irish genius for lip service strikes again. In a bid to revive a language few people understand, the government pursuades the EU to translate all its stuff into Irish; a great way to get people reading it.

Plenty of dissenting views, and a long debate on Slugger O'Toole.

For me though, any language in which the word for rat and Frenchie are the same* deserves all the help it can get.






* Spelled francach and Fhrancaigh respectively. Francach pertains to official French things which will soon resemble to proverbial sinking ships.

Speak for yourself mate

Millionaire Bob Geldof on the G8 debt relief deal: “Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny from the burden of debt that has crippled them and their countries for so long.
“Money we didn’t even know we were owed and never wanted in the first place."

Some of us could use the money you know. It's not as if we're going to build a fifth palace or buy arms with it.

Still it's great to see world leaders acting altruistically... what's that?

Reasons to read newspapers, but not to watch TV

It has come to my attention that Channel Four is screening a most objectionable programme called Big Brother. It would appear that owing to an unfortunate misreading of George Orwell's prescient novel, the programme makers have conceived of an entertainment whereby, like visitors to Bedlam of old, we are invited to laugh at the antics of various lunatics suffering from sundry disorders such as self-delusion, sexual incontinence, psychopathy and tediousness.

Obviously I have no intention of promoting the wretched affair but I was highly amused to learn that one of this year's contestants is the intriguing Derek Laud: a black, gay, fox-hunting Tory, with a knack for getting himself into unfortunate scrapes.

The reason I mention this odd fish is that he was once the subject of one of the finest newspaper profiles I have ever read (in the Observer, pre-internet I'm afraid; you'll have to visit their HQ if you wish to read it in full).

Apart from quoting his merry ripost to a hunt saboteur who told him "A hundred years ago they'd have been chasing you" - "And two hundred years ago I'd have been eating you." It contained the most brilliant euphemism I have ever encountered. Clearly he was somewhat more cagey about his sexuality in those days, because he was described as "a confirmed bachelor, like most of his close friends". Genius.

Reasons not to read newspapers

When uber-Blairite David Aaronovitch bid farewell to the Graun's G2 section (I assume Seamus Milne wouldn't let him anywhere near his shrine to the blessed George of the oil vouchers) he signed off with the modest remark:

With writers such as Emma Brockes, Laura Barton, Lucy Mangan and Hadley Freeman, not to mention the comic talent of Tanya Gold, you won't miss me.

Sure enough, the amount of tooth-furring bollocks in G2 has remained steady since he left for the Times. By the far the worst has been the following mini-autobiography from Sue Townsend during her stint doing the prize quiz:

Sue Townsend will never forget the night of "shock and awe" when Baghdad was bombed by British and American planes. She wonders if Tony and Cherie gathered their children together to watch the television as the bombs fell on the children of Baghdad.

For uninformative smugness this is hard to beat. Why remember that rather than, say, mass murder in various parts of Africa? Does she imagine a Prime Minister who's just started a deeply unpopular war would have nothing better to do at the time?

Surely she doesn't feel the little virtuous glow of those so convinced of their rightness that there couldn't possibly be an alternative view?

I have no especial desire to choose between the self-deluding hypocrites on both sides of this overblown debate, but I must say that Sue Townsend's approach is as simplistic as Fox News's; only considerably more annoying.